by Andrew Kwong
After devouring the biggest bowl of noodles with vegetable dumplings I had ever eaten in my life, I felt a fullness in my stomach that was foreign to me – or at least long forgotten after years of starvation. Third Aunt smiled again, glowing with compassion.
I took a refreshing shower, changed into a brand-new pair of pyjamas she had ready for me, and hopped straight into bed. It was hard to resist the comfort of a mattress.
‘Leave the windows open to keep cool in the night,’ Third Aunt said, before switching off the light. ‘You’re safe here.’ She must have noticed the doubt in my eyes. How did she know that we always closed the windows and doors to our room at home in Shiqi when we went to bed?
My memory of Mama’s quiet image in the kitchen hit me as soon as I got myself comfortable in the cosy bed. Oh, how I missed her. She and the rest of the family were but skin and bones like me. If Third Aunt could see them now she’d cry with great sadness. What the authorities had done to Baba was so unfair, so demeaning. I prayed he would have fewer cuts to his hands mending those old pots and woks, and that Mama would take comfort knowing I’d do all the things she had told me to do and not to do. I prayed that Weng and Ying would receive no more criticism from the school or on the streets, and that my gang of friends would have more food. Like Third Aunt, I now prayed to Buddha and the Goddess of Mercy for compassion. I don’t remember how late it was before I fell asleep. I do remember the tears on my pillow the first night in Macau, and on the many nights that followed.
CHAPTER 21
‘Education, education, education.’ Third Aunt’s first words to me rang loud and clear the next morning. ‘That’s the priority. No doubt about it. You must have a good education, and it begins with A, B, C – English, the language that’s your ticket to the world. It opens up doors for a better life and opportunities out of China.’ I was glad that she sounded just like Baba and Mama.
The first thing she did that morning, after feeding me yummy butter and jam on toast, was to enrol me in an English language class, held on the third floor of a building in busy downtown Macau. There were shops at street level with residential units upstairs where all kinds of businesses were run, including the English school. Lots of signs, large and small, hung from many of the windows to attract customers, and more signs guided them up the narrow stairways. By the summer of 1962 the constant stream of people arriving in Macau, legally and illegally, had turned the once-quiet Portuguese colony into a busy hub.
‘It’ll be twelve dollars a month,’ the kind owner-teacher said to my aunt. ‘The beginners’ class starts at nine in the morning and finishes at eleven each day.’
‘He’s only a little boy.’ Third Aunt pointed at me. ‘Not even a teenager. But a very good boy, and he can clean up after class to help you. Will you please give me a discount?’
I was sure the teacher knew I was a new arrival: skinny, gaunt and dark, with a scrawny face typical of refugees from the mainland – there were thousands of them in the streets. My large staring eyes must have affected her because she lowered her head, perhaps to hide her own eyes, then nodded at my aunt. ‘For him, ten will do.’
My aunt said to me, ‘You’ll tidy up the room before the class begins in the morning and after it finishes.’ She was very good at giving instructions, and I’d become used to her as a young child when she was living in Kwong Street. We climbed down the stairs and headed to the barber shop. ‘Always be polite,’ she told me. ‘Don’t forget to say “thank you” and “please”. And study hard.’ To the barber, she said, ‘A schoolboy’s haircut, please. A really good one, and no less.’
The barber bowed and put on a welcoming smile. In less than a few minutes, I found a strange-looking bony boy with a pale shaven scalp, large haunting eyes and a suntanned face peering at me from the mirror. Third Aunt happily paid the barber. She then took me shopping for a pair of leather shoes, white socks and other essential items, and for clothes that were all at least a size or two bigger than my emaciated frame. ‘You’ll grow into them soon,’ she said to me with her usual confidence on the way back to her bungalow.
*
At the small English language school, fifteen chairs were packed into the living room. Adults and children of all ages conscientiously attended their daily two-hour lessons. I was more than happy to sweep and clean before and after my lesson had finished, then I would hang around and stay on for the next lesson, free of charge. I’d worked out quickly that if I learnt twice the number of new words each day, I would be twice as good in half the time. After all, I’d rather have been cleaning and sweeping to earn an extra lesson than shouting slogans and feeling tired and hungry all the time. I looked forward to my classes every day the way I had longed for food in Shiqi. The opportunity to learn was too precious to miss, and I felt privileged to be able to learn English. This was exactly what my parents had wished for me.
If not for the never-ending sea breeze, walking up and down Fortaleza e Farol da Guia wouldn’t have been so pleasant. There were only a few homes on that insignificant hill, and not many people liked hiking the steep incline, so rent was relatively low, according to Third Aunt. But she liked it there in her bungalow without the fuss of the town around, beside the peace of the pine trees. It was a quiet road even during peak times, and when walking to and from class I had the whole footpath to myself. I practised my pronunciation aloud as my teacher had told us to do, and, like the senior class, I turned words into sentences, feeling accomplished. I marvelled at the flexibility of the language and the many ways in which words could present themselves with different meanings in different situations.
Whenever I walked downtown, I held on firmly to my precious first-ever English textbooks for fear of losing them among the crowds. There were no loudspeakers blaring over my head on street corners, and no posters denouncing our countless enemies, real or perceived. Instead, there were the spirited sounds of free people, and a feeling of energy and vigour. Since as far back as I could remember, the Party had commanded us to reject the capitalist world, painting an ugly portrait that didn’t resemble the reality I was now experiencing.
My stiff leather shoes softened until they were comfortable – if only Ah-dong had been there to see them.
After school, I would keep practising my English in the front courtyard of Third Aunt’s home until late in the afternoon. By then I’d already changed into my pyjamas, as people did in Macau after work or school.
Only a few weeks after my arrival, Third Aunt was pleased with my fast transformation from a mainlander into a city schoolboy. ‘Now you look just like a local,’ she said. ‘Your face is fuller and your complexion is fairer by the day.’ She only needed to tell me once what to do or what to wear, and I would stick to her commands with strict obedience. My sisters used to say with envy that I was her pet. And I must have been.
Before I’d begun kindergarten, back in the Kwong Street house she would feed me in her living quarters every evening when my parents were struggling to provide for my immediate family. Her big round rosewood table, inlaid with shiny pieces of cool marble, had taken up nearly the entire centre of her room, which was off the third lounge room. The table was matched with four round stools, all too high for me to climb onto, so we ate together on chairs at a much smaller wooden table. My aunt kept statues of Guan Gong, Buddha and the Goddess of Mercy in her room, and prayed to them for the family’s safety, and for her husband, who was still living in New York.
To share a meal with Third Aunt was an experience. The fact was, both my older sisters had loathed eating with her because of her strict etiquette – and so when we were children, she hadn’t invited them to eat with her.
‘How one behaves at the dining table reflects one’s upbringing and personality,’ Third Aunt impressed on me every time we shared a meal.
My stomach rumbled, longing for the delicious scrambled eggs and the stir-fried crisp vegetables with tofu. All vegetarian, for respect to Buddha, she’d say. My eyes grew rounder and my mouth couldn
’t stop watering, but I wasn’t to begin eating until she had finished her lecture on dining protocol.
‘Your hands must be on your lap, and you must sit a little away from the table. Look at me when I’m talking to you. Don’t start until your host has begun. Take only your fair portion in front of you. Learn to share . . .’ Her rules rolled out of her pretty lips, and her eyes gleamed with intelligence. Baba had always said that his sister-in-law was one of the most educated and smartest people he’d ever met, as well as being kind.
One evening a few weeks after I arrived in Macau, Third Aunt read my palm to tell my future. This was because I’d told her how I’d saved Ah-ki and Hui from drowning and she was curious about what lay ahead of me. I didn’t tell her of the near accident at the Dragon Boat Festival; I didn’t want her to know that Yiu-hoi and I had been stupid enough to dangle ourselves under a rickety lifesaver’s tower full of spectators over a swollen river, just to watch the annual dragon boat race.
As meticulously as she ran her household, she examined the lines on my palms. She then felt the flesh and every bone in my hands from one side to the other, from one finger to the next. She looked serious. Then she said, ‘It’s going to be a long road, and you’ll only be able to get there if you work consistently. It will take time. Work hard towards whatever goal you may set for yourself. Persevere. You can do it. Buddha teaches us to be compassionate and nurture every life, no matter how insignificant, or small – even an ant’s life needs to be preserved. The fourteen credit points you have earned for saving two lives have already set you on the road to enlightenment.’
In my mind I counted twenty-eight credit points, and if I became a doctor to help people one day, I might earn more blessings.
‘Also,’ she said, ‘you have guardian angels wherever you go.’
I smiled, but didn’t tell her that she was one of them already.
I appreciated so much about my life in Macau, but I missed the cool streams of the waterways that passed through Shiqi, and I missed the Come Happiness Bridge challenge after school, and most of all I missed my parents, sisters and little gang of friends. I wished that they were all there with me. We would compete with each other to be the best at learning English, and my father could help to guide us. He had tried, with the door closed so no one else could hear, to teach me and my sisters a few phrases: ‘How do you do?’ ‘Good morning.’ ‘Good evening.’ ‘My name is . . .’
*
On one of those humid afternoons in the courtyard, several weeks after my arrival, I was trying to concentrate on spelling, but my mind drifted away from my English reader and my eyes wandered to the Guia Lighthouse. It reached into the gentle sky with unyielding poise; it had weathered tempests and typhoons of all magnitudes, and after nearly a hundred years was still guiding boats up and down the estuary of the vast Pearl River Delta. With all my might I wished hard that its rays would reach my family and friends, steering them away from starvation. The sun shifted and slanted to the west. I hastened to return to my reader, and spoke the words out loud to stop my mind from straying.
‘This is a boy. His name is Jack.’
‘This is a girl. Her name is Jill.’
‘I am a good boy.’
‘You are a good girl.’
I tried to read it as the teacher did, with the same accent and punctuation. I practised the sentences a few more times until they came out of my mouth like a running stream, rising and accelerating like the current of the Wonder River. Then I was happy and turned the page to prepare for the next day’s lesson.
Suddenly, I thought I heard Baba’s voice: ‘You are a good boy.’
I looked up, thinking I must be imagining him in the courtyard.
‘Oh, what a good boy you are.’ The voice was loud and triumphant – Baba was walking through the front gate with Mr Lee. I had never dreamed this would happen. They had made it out of China! How?
‘Baba!’ I cried and rushed towards him. He roared with laughter and gathered me up in his arms. We danced all over the courtyard. We laughed. We cried. We held on tight.
Third Aunt appeared, having heard the commotion. She too was overjoyed and rushed to light three big incense sticks to thank the guardian angels. We laughed and cried some more. Before long, evening had descended, and the lighthouse began to glow in the approaching darkness. In the distance, the Ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral gleamed as though with goodness and piety. My world now seemed full of good fortune, as Third Aunt had predicted.
Baba and Mr Lee looked as if they hadn’t been to bed for days, but they were jubilant. They wore new grey cotton trousers, white shirts and black leather shoes, though they stank of the sea. Third Aunt reached for the deodorant spray can – a good wash and a shave would soon sort them out.
Each of them carried a UN Refugee Program parcel containing tins of food, a one-kilo bag of milk powder and a small sack of rice. They rushed to pull out their Macau ID cards to show that they were now legal residents, and they also each carried one ten-dollar bill in Macau currency. The Colonial Portuguese Government granted residency rights to refugees from China upon arrival, while the Red Cross assisted them under the banner of the UN.
Once again we laughed and cried, and weren’t ashamed of it at all. It was the first time in my life that I’d seen my father express his feelings so freely and heartily. I hugged him tight and buried my head in his lap. We were all too excited to think of anyone or anything else at that moment, even Mama and my sisters.
Third Aunt hurried away to make tea and prepare food for the hungry men. When she returned, Baba began to tell us what had happened. ‘Thank heavens we’ve made it.’ He beamed, glancing at Mr Lee. Both men were now brimming with exuberance. ‘For a while I thought we were doomed. The past three days in the water have been the longest of my life.’
Mr Lee straightened his muscular torso, now looking even bigger than usual, and thanked my father with heartfelt gratitude for getting them both safely out of Shiqi.
‘But it is yourself you’ve to thank, Ding-yan,’ Baba replied. ‘Your leadership on board saved many people. I wouldn’t even have been able to plan this if it weren’t for you – being under street arrest wasn’t easy.’ He lit two cigarettes and offered one to Mr Lee, who made an exception that evening and took it. Third Aunt dashed around to open more windows, mumbling her objection to cigarette smoke, but she also said this was a special night. I was sure she’d tell the men not to smoke inside her house ever again.
Baba and Mr Lee sat quietly, drawing on their imported Camel cigarettes, sipping jasmine tea and eating cookies. Then Baba told his story.
‘Three days ago, Ding-yan and I got on board the riverboat in the dark bend of the Nine Meanders River. The boat belonged to another commune – someone had stolen it for the trip. It was one of those flat-bottomed boats used to transport grains in the waterways. A heavy canvas covered the entire hold, and that was where we hid. At the stern, to one side, was a small cabin. The boat squeaked and screeched under its load as we made our way down the Wonder River towards the sea. Each time we reached a checkpoint manned by the People’s Militia guards along the river, someone in that cabin handed a piece of paper to their leader. They then let us pass. There were curtains over the small cabin window, so we couldn’t see who was inside. I got very curious, but no one else seemed to know or care.
‘It took us a good two days to navigate the maze of the waterways, sometimes playing hide-and-seek with the local People’s Militia. We hid among tall river reeds during the day, and sailed in the night. On those moonless nights we couldn’t see any of our surroundings except a few glow-worms glimmering on the banks. They seemed to accompany us all the way, humming like phantoms. We had to stop and manoeuvre the boat out of shallow waters several times. Smells of river mud and ripe reeds hung in the warm night air, lessening our fear.’ For the next few minutes, Baba drew hard on his cigarette. From time to time his eyes shifted towards the open window, as if to make sure no one was out there listenin
g.
He continued, ‘When daylight arrived the first morning, I could see how old the boat was. There were missing boards in the cargo hold where we sat. I recognised many familiar faces from town: doctors, nurses, intellectuals, disgraced teachers and landlords. Oh yes, your Comrade Teacher Wong and her husband were there too, but we didn’t talk to them. We kept to ourselves. Each time someone moved, the boat moved with them. On the wall of the cabin was the name River Pearl 13, in faded white paint.’
Baba took a breath and sipped his tea, savouring the mouth-watering Macau cookies and the pancakes my aunt had made, in between smoking his cigarette. He seemed to appreciate the cool breeze streaming through the large windows. Then he stretched his arms and took a long breath before going on with his story. ‘It was hot under the canvas. We’d had little to eat or drink for two days by the time we left the big river behind. Macau was in sight, and everyone was excited. However, we soon became worried. Would the riverboat withstand the might of the open sea? And how would we negotiate with the People’s Militia gunboats? Questions rushed into my mind,’ he said, looking at Third Aunt.
‘Yesterday we anchored in She-kou, the Serpent’s Mouth, a small bay on the northern side of the broad channel that separates Macau from the mainland. Word came from the cabin that we were to wait for the evening to make our crossing.’ After another long sip of tea and a good suck on his cigarette, he carried on. ‘A young child cried, and couldn’t stop. The upset tore up the silence around us. I was more than surprised that there was an infant in our party. People became worried that the noise might arouse the attention of a group of People’s Militia guards having lunch in their gunboat not far from us. The child’s parents weren’t able to soothe her, no matter how hard they tried. Some people began to get upset, and a few others were even angry, muttering that this might end their quest for freedom. The child’s mother was now sobbing quietly. And the child continued to cry.